01970nam a2200205Ia 4500008004100000020002300041041000800064082001700072100001100089245003600100260004400136300002100180504001000201520135700211650001901568650002501587942001201612999001901624952012101643250103s9999    xx            000 0 und d  a9780197566817qhbk  aeng  a200.071bMIL  aMiller 0aWhy Study Religion? C/ cMiller  bOxford University Pressc2021aNew York  ax, 368p.c24 cm.  aindex  a"This book asks: Can the study of religion be justified? It poses this question on the view that scholarship in religion, especially work in "theory and method," is preoccupied with matters of methodological procedure and thus inarticulate about the goals that can justify the study of religion and motivate scholarship in the field. For that reason, it insists, the field suffers from a crisis of rationale. The book identifies six prevailing methodologies in the field, each of which it critically examines as symptomatic of this crisis, on the way toward offering an alternative framework for thinking about purposes for studying religion. Shadowing these methodologies is a Weberian scientific ideal for studying religion, one that privileges value-neutrality. This ideal poses obstacles to making justificatory claims on behalf of studying religion and fortifies a repressive conscience about thinking normatively within the field's regime of truth. After making these points, the chapter describes the book's alternative framework, Critical Humanism, especially how it theorizes about the ends rather than the means of humanistic scholarship and offers a basis for thinking about the ethics of Religious Studies as held together by four values: Post-critical Reasoning, Social Criticism, Cross-cultural Fluency, and Environmental Responsibility.   a Anthropology   aReligion Methodology  cENGLISH  c567786d567786  00104070aACLbACLc3Bd2024-10-17g3739.95l0o200.071 MILp699082r2025-01-03 12:40:01v5651.00w2024-10-17yREF